Influence of psychological distress on miners’ productivity and psychological well-being: A study of underground and surface gold miners in Ghana

Prof. Paul Kobina Annan Bedu-Addo

University of Education, Winneba, Faculty of Applied Behavioural Sciences in Education

e-mail: pkabaddo@uew.edu.gh, +233241813953, Orcid No: 0000-0002-5848-5640

Dr. Theophilus Andoh- Robertson

University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa, Counselling Centre

e-mail: andohrobertson@umat.edu.gh, +233240251254

Abstract

The influence of psychological distress, on miners’ productivity and psychological wellbeing: A study of underground and surface gold miners in Ghana

This paper investigated the influence of psychological distress on productivity and psychological well-being of underground and surface miners in Ghana using the explanatory sequential mixed-method design. The study was underpinned by the Pearlin's theory of psychological distress, the Acceptance and Commitment Theory (ACT), Ryff’s Six factor model of Psychological wellbeing , as well as Maslow’s Theory of Needs. Using an adapted version of the Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45), as well as structured interview schedule, purposive and convenient sampling techniques were used to collect data from 115 respondents from the Chirano Gold Mine Limited in the Western North Region of Ghana, in two phases. Two research questions and two hypotheses were addressed in this study. The quantitative data was analyzed using One-Sample T-Test, Hotelling's T2 and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Additionally, axial and open coding, as well as deductive thematic analysis was employed in analyzing the qualitative data. The results of the study indicated that though miners were distressed, they were mostly below clinical cut-off points for symptom distress. Additionally, underground miners were statistically more significantly distressed than their surface mining counterparts. Further, female miners reported being more distressed than their male counterparts. Again, there were positive correlations between miners’ levels of psychological distress, productivity and psychological wellbeing. It was therefore recommended that appropriate measures including national occupational mental health policy should be put in place to help ameliorate the level psychological distress of miners. Finally, it was recommended that counselling psychologist should be employed onsite to provide walk-in counselling services to miners.

Keywords:  Psychological distress, psychological wellbeing, clinical cut off, mental health, depression